Israel’s assault on the Gazan
people began November 4, 2008, the day Americans proudly elected Barak Obama to
be their 44th president.

On January 19th, 2009
the eve of Obama’s inauguration, Israel
announces its pullout from Gaza
territories.

Who are we to thank: the Israeli
murderers and their supporting citizenry around the world? American legislators
who fund and endorse the long ethnic-cleansing campaign against Palestinian
peoples? An indignant but ineffectual United Nations does no more than feed a
people forced into penury? Or our glorious celebrity president, Mr. Obama
himself?

It is less heart wrenching if we call the war against Gaza an end of the year review rather than “a beginning of.” Regrettably it is neither. The cowardly punishment of the Palestinians is a long and now well understood agenda.

No one is fooled by statements from Tel Aviv or Washington politicians. Nor are we fooled by the silence of the US president-elect. Remember the guy who made “change” his campaign agenda.

Put aside the numbers of dead and wounded in this campaign, on any side. I have seen enough to remember the blind school for girls, Bashir’s father bedridden and speechless from a stoke, a boy born unable to walk, an aunt in prison, the heart attack of Mona’s mother, the engagement of the boy upstairs, the anticipated university admission of the shopkeeper’s daughter, the pregnant girl, the boy with a limp. All these ailments and hardships, we find in any society, and more.

There are sicknesses, treatments, applications, fights between neighbors or women and daughters-in-law anywhere, including Gaza. think of your own family, and your friends whose children are born with illness, of a father’s sudden death, cancer patients awaiting treatment, a runaway child, or husband, of all that a car crash brings, of a lost gift or a broken sink. A youth wants to write a book, another loves art and dreams to become a sculptor. A young couple fall in love and intend to marry. We all deal with accidents and illness, with marriage and funerals and celebrations, dreams and defeats.

Add to all this, a savage one-sided war. Not just days of bombs, but a siege: no ambulances, broken phones, smashed windows, dwindling food supply, crippled hospitals. Being unable to move from one neighborhood to the next, denied a visit from your son since 1985 because he is barred from returning to his homeland.

This is life in Gaza, in a few sentences. This is everyday in Gaza. The present attacks, in addition to any Israeli and US policy strategies, are aimed at humiliating a people, forcing them to succumb to further disgrace and helplessness. It won’t work.

In his December 28, 2008 address in Lebanon, Hezbullah leader Seyyed Hassan Nassrallah recalls the choice made by Imam Hossein (PBUH): "And how far disgrace is from us! Allah refuses us the life of disgrace, His Messenger and believers do too."

Nassrallah asks: “Why did he declare ‘And how far disgrace is from us’, Why did he say ‘we shall never be disgraced?’
“It was not an emotional outburst! The matter was rather one of humanitarian, ideological spiritual, religious and humane commitment springing from human values, dignity and human rights. As Hossein (PBUH) later tells us ‘...Allah refuses us the life of disgrace, His Messenger and believers do too. Indeed, proud, exalted and lofty spirits will never prefer to obey the vile people, rather than the death of the honorable ones.’"